The Wisconsin Migration Research Group is a Madison-based forum for individuals interested in the cross-disciplinary study of processes related to migration and transnationalism. It was started by and continues to be led by graduate students and faculty allies. As of early 2009, there were 68 graduate students, faculty, and academic staff from campus. These individuals are mostly affiliated with UW Madison, but the email list reaches members from around the world.

Learn about the ins and outs of doing predissertation and MA fieldwork. Our panel can address their issues collecting data in Germany, Turkey, South Korea, and China. Audience participation and input will be wonderful, too!NOTE: To suggest and send recommended readings, please email Jennifer Holland, jaholland@wisc.edu. Files sent electronically along with the citation will help us compile the reading list.* To volunteer to present your in-progress research on migration, email Luisa Feline Freier, freier@wisc.edu.

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

The fourth meeting of this semester will be at Hae Yeon's home. The abstract is below:

When: Tues October 23, 2007 @ 7:00 pmLocation: RSVP to mnguyen[at]ssc[dot]wisc[dot]edu for a food head count

Latino Immigrant Parents’ Responses to U.S. Childrearing Values and Practices Lynet Uttal, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Latino immigrant children are being raised by parents who themselves were raised in different cultural contexts. One of the greatest stresses for new immigrant parents is to learn how to integrate the parenting values and practices of the U.S. with their own cultural backgrounds. One of the most significant differences between U.S. childrearing advice and the parenting knowledges of parents from Spanish speaking countries is the child-centric versus the family-centric approach to socialization. At school, children of immigrant parents are taught to be individualistic and competitive. At home, children are expected to be communalistic and look out for the whole family, not just themselves. Different notions of adult-child communication styles also prevail. These differences result in cultural conflicts for the immigrant parents as well as the children of immigrants. Latino immigrant parents are critical of the ethnocentric expert principles of child development that are pervasive throughout childcare settings and parent education programs in the United States today. Latino parents are baffled by recommendations that appear to fail to guide the child appropriately and suggest inattentive parenting practices. This paper will present the parental views of this dynamic, including how parents develop novel ways to parent biculturally. This analysis in this paper is based on data from 3 years of community pláticas (facilitated dialogical workshops) for Latino immigrant parents on parenting topics. Participant observation and writing exercises collected during the pláticas were used to collect data on parents’ perspectives of child development principles taught in the United States.

Thursday, October 11, 2007

CENTER FOR REASEARCH AND ANALYSIS OF MIGRATION (CREAM)Available at:http://www.econ.ucl.ac.uk/cream/

BERKELEY INTERDISCIPLINARY IMMIGRATION WORKSHOPAND THE INSTITUTE OF INDUSTRIAL RELATIONSAvailable at:http://www.iir.berkeley.edu/immigration/index.html.The web site is designed to provide researchers, instructors and interested citizens withsubstantive content pertaining to immigration issues, including resources for studyingand researching immigration, teaching courses with immigration content and providingeasy access to news stories on immigration in the US and abroad. This website includes:statistical information, archives, journals that publish on immigration, think tanks, andcourse syllabi. Comments welcomed! — Irene Bloemraad

MIGRES WEBSITEEuropean University InstituteThe website offers descriptions and links for national and international institutions workingwith immigration, a list of journals on immigration, a selection of syllabi kindly contributedby various professors from different fields as well as a directory of scholars fromboth Europe and North America who currently work with immigration.Available at: http://www.iue.it/RSCAS/Research/MIGRES/